A Broken-Down Mailboat Left Clallam County Cut Off
For months, the steamer on the Neah Bay route ran late, broke down, and at least once used a craft known to be unsafe. The Post-Intelligencer wanted the contract revoked.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We have had a number of complaints for the past two or three months from patrons in Clallam County of the mail service. The irregular receipt of this paper is in consequence, injury to trade, etc. Almost the only communication these people have with other parts of the country is by mail steamer, and when that fails they virtually have no communication at all. Latterly it has failed them continually; the boat coming and going has hardly a single week been according to schedule. The irregularities have been occasioned by the real inability of the contractors to properly perform the service. They have a broken-down apology for a steamboat, and are unable or probably unwilling, as well. This thing they forced upon the route until it would go no longer, and since then they have shifted the mail from steamer to steamer, employing, in at least one craft, a boat known to be unsafe for any route, much more a dangerous route like that to Neah Bay.
Mail contracts are not awarded to men for the purpose of making money out of them. Their object is to serve the people along the routes named in the best manner and at the least possible expense. It is supposed by the Government that men not prepared to perform the service will not undertake it, and when they are found unprepared the contract is sometimes taken from them.
An instance of this character occurred here last summer. A citizen of our own town put forward the lowest bid for the Sitka service, and the contract was given him. He was unprepared to perform it. He called in assistance and got a tugboat. He carried the one trip and that ended it.
There was no evidence of intention or ability on his part to properly perform the service, and his contract was revoked and a new one entered into with the old company he was endeavoring to displace.
This was not a pleasant outcome to our people, but, under the circumstances, it was the only right one. This Neah Bay route will, or should, go the same way if a better effort is not made by the contractors to execute the letter and spirit of their contract. The people of Alaska were considered in the one case, and the people of Clallam County will be in the other. The carrier of the mail is in the minority, and if he stands in the way of good to the majority he will be swept aside.
“Almost the only communication these people have with other parts of the country is by mail steamer, and when that fails they virtually have no communication at all.”
The 1883 complaint is an early version of a familiar Washington argument: isolated communities depend on a thin line of public transport, and Seattle decides how much their connection is worth. Replace the mail steamer with a ferry or rural broadband and the stakes are much the same.
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